ZUrabia by Peter Dash Book Review

ZUrabia Book Review

Pub 2011 - 384 pp

ZUrabia is not only a fast-paced and action-packed suspense thriller of James Bond proportions, the story itself holds immediate relevancy to the recent media attention given to hidden offshore and overseas banks accounts, tax evasion and U.S. negotiations with these countries to divulge their secrets. In 2010, Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FACTA, which calls for overseas banks to begin full disclosure on bank accounts held by U.S. citizens beginning in 2014. In ZUrabia, the many forces in opposition to this ‘sharing of information’ are deadly and powerful.

Adrian Sands is a covert operative and assassin in Z5, a highly secretive and privately funded organization which acts as an international watchdog. He has been activated to keep an eye out on The Dianesis Order, a female order with Masonic roots which spends its time holding luxurious benefits in the name of suppressed women. Z5 feels that they may have been targeted by Muslim extremists and other radicals, and Adrian is set in place under one of his many guises to watch over their members, especially Isolde, a Countess and the order’s elegant leader.

Isolde somehow becomes connected with a top secret document which she is scheduled to retrieve and bring back to Zurich. Z5 is aware of its immediate importance and has Adrian accompany Isolde as a chaperon to Panama. But Z5 isn’t the only group aware of this document, a key list which holds an encrypted set of names – all of whom are considered to be top priority sell-outs, turncoats and spies who want to bring down the West. Adrian and Isolde manage to evade capture and execution by a number of factions, and finally find themselves jetted to a Z5 safe house. When Adrian’s name is erroneously revealed in the deciphered list, there are no more safe houses for Adrian. Moreover, the list of names contains deeper secrets, there is more to Isolde than Adrian knows, and Z5 has a problem.

The backbone to this story isn’t the adventure or potential romance between our main characters, but the widespread corruption and greed shared by a number of unsavory characters. K-Boom, a nuclear weapons specialist, had his Zurich bank account assets stolen from him at U.S. persuasion. He concocts a revenge scheme as payback to the West by arranging a nuclear holocaust where it would do the most financial damage – Zurich. And he has a lot of support: Schmidt, a corrupt Swiss banker who plays the market on gold and silver to his advantage before fleeing the country and who also enjoys embalming his living enemies with liquid precious metals in his special torture room; Muslim extremists who want nothing more than to see the West fall; a worldwide youth-group of neo-Nazi fundamentalists; and other people in lofty positions. While Adrian and Isolde fight to stay alive and solve a mystery, the clock is ticking away to meltdown.

The character of Adrian Sands is a split-personality on top of a multiple personality disorder. On one side he is a cool-headed assassin who employs a number of disguises aided by his own exemplary language skills. He is known by Interpol and has a worldwide reputation for getting the work done. On the other side, he is a lonely alcoholic who loves the high life but feels the pressure from living so many different lives.

“..I could be dreadfully jaded as an overexperienced traveling assassin who more than occasionally had quite an expense account – and a fatalistic attitude at quickly gobbling up the very best. But when I ran low on money, I would be happy to polish off a cheap rosé that was good enough to lap off the table. Or leave all over the table in a drunken, sad fit after staging another act of unfeeling liquidation.”

He’s not the perfect ‘shaken, not stirred’ spy and assassin we come to expect, but a real person whose occupational stress shows through as cracks in his train of thought and in his interactions with Isolde. He makes the story believable.

The added elements of fiction in this real-world drama make the novel completely unique. Peter Dash mixes our own current events with fictional places such as Sarabia and Tyrania, Muslim countries with their own burgeoning populations of extremist ethos. And in Dash’s world, a Muslim invasion has begun with a number of Islamic influences in western countries. Along with this culture influx, the suppression of women becomes more apparent and too close for comfort. That’s where the Dianesis Order comes into play. The author also ties in interesting characters of history who play real parts in the story such as Van Gogh and Princess Diana.

While Sarabia has its own cast of bad guys, as does many other countries and factions, this book isn’t an attack on the Muslim world. The extremists make up a small percentage and two of our unexpected heroes come straight from Sarabian royalty. And although Islamic Jihadists and neo-Nazi fundamentalists are scary by their own right, ZUrabia will have you fearing Swiss bankers above all.

What I loved about this novel was the slow untying of knots at the end. There wasn’t a quick and predictable resolution but a natural build, piece by piece, where each of our nefarious plotters is fingered and systematically eliminated with delightfully gory details. The very end of the book, in its extreme height, made me think of the movie Speed with Keanu Reeves, but instead of a bus we have a train. And just when you think everything is going to be tied up into a nice and neat package, Dash hits you with another surprise: a jaw-dropping cliffhanger that will have you sitting straight up, re-reading the last few pages over and over again. When you scream, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But don’t worry, a sequel is forthcoming.

The reader will have to hurdle the novel’s overly long information dump in the beginning. The story doesn’t get going until chapter twelve. However, once you make it to that point, it becomes increasingly difficult to put the book down.

I would suggest this book to anyone and everyone in the financial sector. Bankers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, investors and, of course, anyone associated with the IRS. To everyone else, this is not only a great novel but an educational piece. It is designed to inform the reader about what potentially goes on in private banks and to make the reader think about possible futures. ZUrabia is a fiction novel that is terrifyingly as real as it gets. You’ll never look at bankers the same way again.

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Rebecca Skane

Rebecca is the founder of the Portsmouth Book Club. Google it. It's free to join! Follow me on Goodreads! Read Full